Harper’s gambit
I knew the man was clever. I didn’t think he was this clever:
Stephen Harper’s decision to end public financing for political parties is a daring gambit that could pay off in several ways, but could also land him on the ash heap, out of office just months after winning his way back in. It is cynical, clever, calculating and diabolical. It’s also dirty pool, and its success depends a great deal on his reading of the attitude of the electorate.
If it goes through, it would thoroughly hobble the opposition. You can tell that just by the speed and shrillness of their protests. The Liberals, as John Ivison reports, are deep in dept, barely able to keep up the payments on the loan they took out to fight the last election, and dependent on the $1.95-per-vote subsidy to do so. More than that, they have just launched a leadership contest which requires the participants to raise money from donors who have already given several times in recent years: to Paul Martin for the 2006 campaign, to candidates in the last leadership contest, and again for the most recent election. Many have to be tapped out, and are being approached at a time when even the wealthiest are counting their quarters in anticipation of dire times ahead.
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The NDP, oddly enough, might survive relatively unscathed, having matched the Tories in developing an effective grassroots fundraising apparatus, but the Greens and the Bloc would be deep in the doo-doo.
This is an oddly…populist? Is that the right word?…move from Harper, but one which I find I really like the sound of, the more I think about it. Though it would obviously confer his party a major tactical advantage in coming elections, at its core, I think the policy also gives additional power and voice to the average Canadian. Political parties would become totally dependent on the financial contributions of their supporters (presumably, the extant limits for private and corporate contributions to parties would remain fixed at their present levels), which would mean that only those parties which enjoyed solid public support and confidence would be able to afford to run comprehensive campaigns in elections.
The Tories are well-positioned for that. As Kelly McParland notes, the NDP is likewise well-positioned to thrive in such an environment. Fringe and special interest parties, such as the Greens or the Bloc, wouldn’t fare as well. And the Liberals…well, there’s perhaps an ironic lesson to be learned, there. The Liberals are, after all, the go-to party if one is a proponent of government largesse, and it is rather unfortunate that their own dependence on the public funding they would so readily be forthcoming with when in power would be their downfall.
There’s a lesson there about how little one should trust one’s future and fate to the whims of the state, methinks.
It seems to me this is somewhat backwards, in terms of giving power to the people of Canada. If the public financing is removed then the strongest parties will be whoever has the wealthiest supporters. I very much like the idea of $1.95/vote with very strict limits on private and corporate contributions; it should greatly reduce the ability of corporations and the rich to buy legislation. (Without the strict limits on private donations, of course, additional government funding is silly.)
And I will be shocked if the limits on private and corporate contributions remain the same; this sort of legislation is almost inevitably the prelude to removing this sort of limits. (I can hear it now: “But how can we survive if there’s no government funding and our supporters can’t donate what they feel is right?”)
-Erf.
The remark about limits was not something I derived from the article, incidentally; it was a personal observation, something that just came to mind. I suppose one could read into this a prelude to removing the limitations…but somehow, I just don’t see it. Even if one assumes the absolute worst about Harper, one must assume he is clever enough to recognize that even he can’t curry enough favour with the electorate to get away with that for very long.
And even if one assumes the absolute worst about Harper, and assumes he is in fact little more than a corporate stooge, one must still assume he’s clever enough not to do anything which would make his stoogery obvious.
The remark about corporations and the rich “buying” legislation is an interesting one. A common assumption — Erf, I am not saying this is your assumption — is that corporate interests and the rich tend to support conservative parties and candidates…but I would wonder at just how accurate that assumption is. I know that Obama captured a goodly percentage of the “wealthy” vote in the recent US election, and I’d wager that he also captured a goodly chunk of corporate support. I don’t have stats on that, although I might see if I can look them up…but well, his $650 million in donated funds didn’t just come from the poor and middle class, did it?
Canada and America aren’t as similar, politically, as they are in other areas, but I’d be very surprised if the Liberal Party here didn’t have, in its pocket, a sizeable chunk of both the corporate and “wealthy” pie, so to speak. Corporations that have worked closely with the government have…ah…tended to do very well when the Liberals are in power. As have rich contributors to the Liberal cause.
Oh, I’m sure both the Liberals and the Conservatives get sizable chunks of their funding from corporations and the wealthy; similarly in the US for the Dems and Reps. My concern is that there’s a tendency for money to influence policy, though. “I’ll give you this enormous donation if you’ll lean this way on that legislation.” I don’t know if it’s as bad here as in the US, but I’m sure it happens. (In the US, for example, there’s one senator who’s often referred to as “The Senator for Disney”.)
If all major parties have access to more or less the same funding, their campaigning will tend to balance out and they’ll be encouraged to campaign on their own merits, which is always a good thing.
Granted, money has an influence…and then one that is hardly limited to policy. Of course, one cannot make such an observation about Canadian politics without noting that the Liberal party would seem to be the party most guilty of scracthing the backs of those who open their wallets the widest.
(Granted, the NDP has never held a position of power so as to be able to do that for its supporters. Granted, yet further, that the Conservative party is too new an entity to have amassed for itself that kind of record (that said…thus far in office, they have remained relatively free of that kind of scandal).)
I think it is worse in the US than it is here, as even in the midst of the worst of the Liberal financial scandals, no sitting representative ever ended up being…er…corporately branded, so to speak. At least not that I can recall. I wonder if perhaps there isn’t something in our Westminster-derived style of government that has a limiting effect here?
The way I see it, Harper’s proposal here takes the issue of each party campaigning on their own merits and extends it to include the idea of each party raising funds on their own merits. Why should Canadian citizens, through their tax dollars (which, ultimately, is where that $1.95/vote comes from), be made to support a political party (or political parties) that they wouldn’t dream of contributing money to if they met a canvasser on the street?
Will they or won’t they? | Kenneth Hynek (November 28, 2008, 12:15 pm).
[...] the opposition parties vote to topple the government — in response to Stephen Harper’s proposal to end public funding of political parties — or won’t they? They’re threatening to…but that’s the problem with [...]